I used to love drawing. There was a time I wanted to do my own comic book and my own comic strip. I even did over a year of strips for a comic strip. I knew I wasn't the best artist but it passed for a simple comic strip. There were some things I did that looked really good. In fifth grade, we were supposed to do our own take on a famous painting. I took the Mona Lisa and turned her into Cyclops from the X-Men. I wish I still had that but it got lost somewhere between moving from Baldwin to Lawrence back in 2002 along with all the other art I kept.
When I was in middle school, my aunt paid for my cousin and me to take a summer drawing thing. It was a fun class but it was then I realized that I was a terrible artist. It's not that I didn't try because if I really take my time then I could do something pretty cool as this odd anthropomorphic leopard shows:
See? It's not too bad but I spent too much time on drawing it and didn't have time to color it. Our last assignment was to create a short comic book--four pages. I don't know why I didn't choose one of my comic strip characters but instead I made up a superhero that was similar to Superman in every way imaginable. I even remember going in with my family and all the other kids' families and going through all the books and mine was clearly the worst. I was so embarrassed and made sure that no one could connect that terrible comic to me.
I still have it, you can read it below. See if you can tell the parts where DC Comics/Warner Bros. could sue me. Keep an eye open, they're a little hard to see.
It was during my freshman year in high school that I finally decided to quit drawing. I was so excited about my year-long art class but as the year wore on, I realized that I was not getting any better so no more art for me. Except for my maps or doodles in the margins of my notebooks and
Customer Service, I haven't drawn anything since.
Brutus, even if that were true, I would not consider you a "successful breadwinner." Breadwinner, sure, but not successful.
